Willem Boshoff's Blind Alphabet

Abstract

Blind Alphabet by Willem Boshoff is a philosophical meditation on the nature of touch, sight and knowledge, and confronts sighted viewers with their own inadequacies in a world where sensibility is equated primarily with sight. Boshoff has challenged received notions regarding the privileging of sight over touch in many of his artworks, and this forms the explicit rationale for his installation Blind Alphabet (1991-1995, work in progress). According to Boshoff (1996) this work re-establishes the integrity of touch as a socially viable catalyst for interactive discourse. It sets up touch, in favour of sight by enabling, if not ennobling the state of blindness, and by disabling the sense of sight.